Where Ravens take Flight
by Kait Hobbit
Summary: Every year on the anniversary of Tris Prior's death, Four and Christina meet to help each other get through the day. But on the Thirtieth Anniversary, Four's office calls Christina alarmed when their supervisor hasn't come in. On a cold, rainy day, Christina searches for Four and her own thoughts about memories of their friend.
1. Angel Dandruff

When Ravens take Flight

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AN: I wrote this after a really bad week relationship wise, when I had to be out of the house. Christina's pov, excuse the errors (published sans beta). Just a bit of prattle. Steam of Consciousness in some parts. Part two will be up shortly.

* * *

Part One: Angel's Dandruff

The sky had been raining for days when they called me to the Hub. The city's gutters had become lakes, flooding the street and sending the litter like sailboats along the lanes. It isn't rare for us to get weather like this; it was nearly winter. There would only be so many more days like this before the snow came down and cast the city under a blanket of white.

When I was younger growing up in Candor, we loved the first snow. In part because with our what snow jackets we would play hide and seek with the others and no one could find us, but also because like our mothers taught there was the fresh start with the white but you could see it go black the longer it covered it's lies. The longer the snow sat, and dirtier it became. Snow days were their favorite object lesson. Leave it to a bunch of Candor Mothers to make something as precious and fun loving as snow and make it a twisted hunt for truth and honesty.

But that was years ago. Back when I still looked forward to the first snow of the season. It was going to be my first snow as a Dauntless. I thought I'd still like it. I'd marvel at my jet black playing through the falling white. My first nights in initiation, I imagined my three new friends and I running up and down alleyways as the snow flew. The Black against the perfect white.

But it wasn't meant to be.

Not that first year or any year after. Now, thirty years later, it was something I dreaded. Because I knew what it would make me remember. That one day that I had the last stronghold I knew fall and my world collapsed. It was symbolic in ways. The snow fell as though it was trying to cool the revolutionary fervor Four and Tris had started. But cooled it in a way none of us had planned for. It happened on the first snow of the season. I could remember little flakes, Angel's Dandruff, mom would've called it, falling from the heavens but disappearing before anything could stick.

But I couldn't even notice it.

All I could notice was the sharp pain that had been in my chest since Will died reopened again. All I could remember was pounding my fists into the terminal floor, crying and screaming at the tile until as Four stood in his own unanswerable grief.

All I could remember was the cold snow brush across my hands when I ran outside. _Angel Dandruff_ mom said, when the angels shook their heads and questioned our decisions. As they melted on my fingers I decided they were more tears than dandruff.

And that's what it was today. Tears that were falling from heaven and flooding the Hub below.

I brush against the morning crowds, dodging the rain puddles and folded umbrellas, until I reach the reserved elevator that's meant to be for official business only and slide my access badge. Glancing to my surroundings, an old habit that even this new faction-hybrid-whatever world couldn't break, I begin typing in the code that only a handful in the city knows. Its one of those unexpected privileges of being Four's oldest, one of his few friends. Impart, because _I _was _her _friend first.

We normally meet each other today. We see each other more than just once a year, but this is one of the days we always touch base. I was half way to my office in the Department of Law and Safety when I got the phone call. His assistant had been on the other end, rather panicky _"Mr. Eaton has not returned his calls since yesterday afternoon and hasn't come in this morning."_ She was calling from the old Euridite headquarters. One of the twists that the revolution left the city was Johanna had kept the Headquarters as the center of operations, like Four's mother had in the fortnight the factionless ruled. The assistant was new. Probably in her early twenties. She didn't know what this week was. She didn't know how much he _still _hated that building. Especially on days like today. There weren't many people that did. Most of them had died. Or ran away to new lives beyond the wall.

I tell him he's a sentimental sap.

He says Chicago has too many physical scars for him, that someday's he just needs to stand on the sidelines.

I tell him Stiff's aren't supposed to hold grudges, even towards buildings.

He tells me it's a good thing he's not a Stiff anymore.

I reached the 88th floor and thundered my fist on his door as though its thunder. "Enough of the melodramatics Eaton," I holler out, "My teenage daughter is more reasonable than this."

Silence on his end. It's ten in the morning on a Thursday. He should be up. Probably in his boxers. Drinking some of that black tea he's taken to in his forties. It's supposed to help with flashbacks. I think it helps him remember better, he always has a dark look in his eyes as he drinks it. I pound the door a second time, louder than the first. "Four, I know what today is too. We can't do this. Not again. We promised each other that much. Open the damn door."

After I stand there in my fuming justice for a few moments, I jiggle the handle and punch in another code and it opens. "You know, I don't think she'd appreciate the fact you've made me your babysitter on days like this," I grumble, closing the door and entering his flat. It's a standard one people in the government have. Nothing overtly lavish, but there is a splendor to it that wouldn't be comfortable to someone who grew up in Abnegation. The walls are a deep blue and the accented grey curtains nearly disappear amid the clouds outside. There's a sofa that looks as though it was slept on recently. A familiar grey blanket draping over it. I try not to look at it for too long. I thought he kept in in a box, I didn't know it was out, that he used it. Instead I focus on the blue sculpture that's been the only thing to survive the war unscathed. It looks dull in the rainy morning. Sitting atop a bookshelf next to a dying plant.

"Tobias," I call out, its been thirty years but the name still feels out of place. It's what she would call him. Not me. _Four? like the Number? _ That was our first interaction. That's what it's been ever since.

"Four, it's Christina—" I walk past the kitchen which looks untouched other than the half empty bottle and crumbs on a plate. I glance at the shelves. He can say all he wants he's not a stiff but I can't think of many leading officials that only have half a loaf of bread and empty jar of peanut butter in the cupboard.

"Listen, your office thinks something's up, so they sent in the cavalry," his study is empty, except the messy stack of books and paperwork only he could call orderly. Computer data. Configuration from the outside fringe. Something about the archives of the factions. There's a "IV and VI" written atop one file and I put it down tucking it under other files, knowing well whose picture I could find there. I shouldn't shy away from it, but I do anyway. We can talk about her today, but I don't want to see her. Not today. It was easier on the fifth anniversary, even the tenth. But she still looks sixteen. That's all she'll ever look. When I look in the mirror, I have the creases in my brow and the grey streaking my hair. And I know she'll never share aging secrets with me. It's silly how thoughts like that can make you hurt.

He's such a sentimental sap somedays. I think, looking back to the now hidden folder. Especially on days like today.

I reach his door. It's mostly shut. The grey light of the day outside creeping through.

It's a rainy day. The kind of day you use to remember every sad thing that ever happened in your life. For people like Four and I, that day is everyday but the pain becomes alive again in the rain.

Its the anniversary of the day we went to call Uriah's family to his side. The day we returned to the city and Four was able to convince his mother a more peaceful route. In four months there'll be a celebration marking Thirty years of City peace. It'll be spring, people will go to the parks. They'll be picnics. Because they celebrate the happy balm bought for peace but forget the cost. They used to talk a lot about the rebellion in the years after it happened. Now my children might mention it, when they're asking their father for help on their homework. They know better than to ask me.

Because some of us can't forget. Some of us are still paying the cost.

It's a rainy day and the anniversary. Of when they last saw each other alive. Of what was supposed to be the first day of the rest of their forever. Of the day I stopped hating him and decided I could probably stomach the thought of the two of them together and happy, the surviving lovers of the war. Its the anniversary. Of the day when fairytales didn't come true. Of the day that became their final goodbye. Of the day I began hating snow.

"If you're moping in there you best stop unless you want me to throw you out the window," I grumble to the door, "It's been thirty years," I say. I'm forty-six. I've lived outside of Chicago and returned home time after time. I married. His name's Thomas. He was a Dauntless too, Amity born, three years older than me. He hid with Abenegation after the first Eurodite attack. Ran rebels with Zeke against the Factionless. We have children. I have a daughter named Bea who is 13 and a son named Donny who is 10. We live off of Mayfield. We argue. We laugh. We pretend things are alright. It's been thirty years. But I've moved on. Or at least that's the lie I tell myself every morning.

I push the door open unsure of what Four I'll find this year. We've kept this tradition on and off. Every year we try and check up on one another. So we don't have to do it alone. So we don't have to tell ourselves that lie. One year he surprised my husband and I with taking the kids to the park where they restored the ferris wheel. He told Bea about her Aunt Tris who climbed the ferris wheel when it was broken and helped her mom capture the flag.

Another year I found him looking down at the Pit as a few younger kids, not Dauntless or anything in this new world, laughed and sparred at one another. Like it was before. "_Sometimes I don't think they'll ever realize what she did, why she did it,_" he said numbingly, watching a group of kids leaning over the chasm, laughing all the while_. "Sometimes I think no one will remember after we're gone_."

Some years her anniversary is the darkest day, and I swear his eyes go black. Others he's alright. Neither here nor there. I tried to talk him into going zip lining again for one of these days but he always brushed it off. Emphatically. Sometimes He'll spend it at the Government Offices like its any other day, but I still sneak in and he has two bottle of something on his desk, one for him and one for me. There have been the darker years—those early ones where every month seemed to be an anniversary, that I'd find him back at her house in Abnegation. The old Prior home. He can't go there anymore. A new family moved in six months after wards. She didn't have any personal effects—selfless living and all, but he took a couple things. The blanket from her bed that now drapes his sofa. The socks her mother had left half knitted in the living room. Stiff trinkets. Things she would've passed but perhaps not touched. Simple things that remind him she was real. Not just a pleasant dream that had a nightmarish end a few months when he was eighteen.

"What's it going to be this year?" I ask surveying the scene. He's just laying there in bed. As though he's asleep but I assume better. "Remember when you nearly beat your old man to a pulp to prove yourself to Dauntless? It's a good thing Marcus is dead, if they saw you now you'd have to do him in."

Still he doesn't move. His eyebrow is at ease. He looks younger when he sleeps. He's aged well these past years. He doesn't have the grey hair I do. He's still strong, still put together. And when he sleep he looks like he did thirty years ago. Back on _that _day. It's only when his eyes are open that I see the forty-eight year old warrior who now plays a hand in the government.

"If you wake up I'll make you scrambled eggs," I offer, my voice somewhat sweeter, hoping that he has at least that much in the fridge. I sit down on the edge of his bed. He's been there for so much of my life. He was the one that gave me away at my wedding after my dad had died. He was at the hospital when both of my children were born. He sends me a piece of chocolate cake for my birthday. I was there for when his mother died. When he took up a new government role. On days when he 'run's away' because he thinks that's all he can do. We're each other's family. We've introduced each other as "My Brother" or "My Sister." For us it wasn't ever "Faction before Blood." We just became both for each other. The movements are natural, like that of a sister. In particular, a sister who wants to through water on him to wake him up.

"Come on, we talked about this. We're not doing this again this year. Not again. I've already ordered a chocolate cake from the old Bakery. Lynn and Zeke are going to be over at my place tonight. We're going to have a dinner, make some toasts—" _Try and pretend Tris is there and only stepped out for some fresh air, she's telling Bea some embarrassing story—we'll try to tell ourselves Uriah and Will are upstairs helping Donny on his homework—_Still he's unmoved. "—We'll have a good time. They worry about you. And the kids want to hear about that one time you nearly wet yourself on the zipline. Tom told, not me."

He doesn't shift or stir. He's become a deep sleeper in his older years. I grab his hand and hold it hard. "Dammit Four, get out of bed!"

I grab his pillow and yank it from under him. His head hits the mattress and I'm about to beat him with the pillow when I notice the blood on the right side. My inside tense. I crouch over him and notice the dry blood that had trickled down his neck, the thicker blood pooled in his ear.

My insides run cold. I've seen that injury before. I know what's happening.

My fingers fly to the emergency button on my communicator. Government Issue. Again, a prop of being friends with Four. "Medical emergency on the 88th floor of the Hub," I'm trying to get the words out. Trying to stay calm. But its like I'm in the fear scape again. The walls are closing in and the floor is falling through.

_Oh God, not him. He's all I have left of her. Not him. _

I hesitantly put my hand against his forehead, fearing what I'll feel. There's body heat. He's clammy as the lakes, but he's still there. "F—Tobias, it's Tobias Eaton._Yes that Tobias Eaton._ There's been an emergency. He has blood out of his ear and isn't responsive. I can't see any physical head trauma—"They're sending someone. They're telling me not to disturb him. Keep him as stable as I can. Help is on the way. They should be there on the scene in five minutes.

But all I can't process that. I can't think what their words mean. All I can think is _"You Bastard, you can't leave me alone. Least of all on a day like today.'"_

* * *

((*))


	2. Ravens take Flight

When Ravens Take Flight

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We're closest to the old Hospital off Michigan. I ring Lynn and Zeke. She's working at the Old Amity building on 26th, she promises to try and make it as soon as she can. Zeke's on patrol on the fringe and won't be in till that evening when he was planning on coming over to the house. Four doesn't have a wife to cry over him, someone to hold his hand and make false and empty promises. No, he only has his rag tag band of Dauntlesses that keep him together. His Faction before Blood, now that Blood is dead and buried. As twisted as the factions were, they at least gave us some other sense of family.

It falls to me now.

I fill out the paperwork. I listen to what the Doctor's think. _Brain injury—possibly from a fall. We need to do scans. Possibly an aneurism. We won't know till the results are back. _I get to argue and ask the questions when I don't like what their telling me.I'm glad I'm the one to hear it and not Zeke. Anything to do with the brain, the body in the bed becomes Uriah and we remember how that ended.

I call Thomas. He says he'll try and make it over, but he's down on Cermark, and by the time he could get to the hospital the kids will be out of school. My Husband is a good man. His official job is working in an office that manages aide to outside settlements, helping those that left the city when the gates first opened. They had made it on their own independently for a while, but after the tornado a few years ago, Thomas and his department have been assisting, especially in the colder months. It's the perfect job for an Amity turned Dauntless. But I know right now he'd rather be at my side than ordering winter clothes for the settlements.

"You'll be alright?" he asks when we both know the answer. We both know what today is. "Yeah, you know me" I lie, "Wouldn't be today if it wasn't spent in a hospital room, brings back all the good memories."

"I'll be over once the kids are home. I'll take them to Josie's and she can look after them," he promises, "Bea won't like being left with a sitter but—"

"Tell her there's cake involved if she goes with out a fuss," I barter pinching my nose. The doctor is singling for me again and I turn back to the phone, "I got to go sign more paperwork. Hurry over when you can."

I hear him say _'I love you' _as I walk towards the doc. I've never cared for doctors. Even when I had the kids. It's the Candor in me. I know when they're lying. It's all in the way they hold himself. And now this one, he looks as though he's covering up a murder.

"You're family of Mr. Eaton?" he asks. Everyone in the city nows Tobias Eaton's family. Everyone knows the stories. Markus disappeared years ago, was rumored dead in Milwalkee. Evelyn died three years ago after a battle with Cancer. His nearest significant other died thirty years ago in a shooting. " Close enough," I grimace, "Faction before blood, I'm his sister, wife and mother. What's it to you?"

It's harsher than I'd normally answer, but I don't want the sugar coating. Not today. Today isn't a day Four and I sugar coat. It's a day where we're raw. Where we feel every awful emotion we can muster. It's the day where we tell the truth and eat cake. Where we cover our wishes with realities. It's not the day I want to get bullshit half ass promises form a medical professional who is delaying the inevitable. I almost went in to medicine after the war. Even I know what blood in the ear means. The fact they still have a pulse in him is nothing short of a miracle.

"We got the scans finished, we're just waiting for radiology to finish looking at him. You can sit with him if you'd like—he's back in the room."

I almost feel bad for snapping.

((*))

All the times Four's been to the medics, this is the first time I see him in a gown.

Of course, this is the first time we've been to the medics and he's unconscious and unable to protest.

"You look ridiculous, you know," I tell him as I fold a deck of cards and lay them out in front of us. "If she was here she'd agree." I lean in closer and whisper, "But the nurses are still checking you out. Pretty sure they looked at your back tattoo longer than the ought to of, Go for the brunette when you wake up," I lie. Because I know he's not going to get up. And even if he did, he'd never go for a nurse. He's been alone for thirty years. No, _waiting_ for thirty years.

I look at his hand and find the numbers. IV and VI. Interlocked. It was subtle. Not many are left that remember she had only seven fears. I think I'm the only one who knows she was six. He told me he got that for One last glance, one last touch when ever he looks down. She's still there, lingering in his hand just as she lingers in his life.

"You're a mess, you know that?" I whisper, playing with the edge of the sheet, "A damn, sentimental mess."

I can see the other tribute to her near the collar of his hospital gown. Two ravens on his collar bone, flying near his heart. A tribute he got on the first anniversary. I have three ravens on my left side. One for every friend I lost that year. "It's a good thing we're ink junkies rather than alcoholics," I muse taking a set of cards from his nightstand, "Or we might have ended up here sooner. Here at the finish line."

It was a similar place. A similar situation years ago. Only it was Uriah in the bed and I was waiting. Uriah and I—we were never—it was too soon after Marlene, I was still on the mend after Will—there was never any time for us to be something. I know Tris thought there could be something, maybe she even hoped Uriah and I would've been able to heal each other in our own little way. But that never happened. Walls tumbled down, and blocked that. I wondered in the years after that whether or not if he had lived if something could've happened…

…but I can't think about that. In full honesty I haven't really. Not for year. But especially not now. Not when it was Four lying in that bed. Just waiting.

"The Doctor's believe you had an aneurism last night. They don't know why yet," I tell him flipping over cards. "Talked to Vera at the office, she said you weren't working on anything extremely stressful, so it wasn't a work stress that triggered it." I flip over a Ace of Diamonds, "They're reviewing the tapes at the gym you go to, you didn't have a fall. Flawless work out—sometimes I think you know we have the camera on you," I turn another, "If it wasn't a fall, and it wasn't stress, they're going to start pulling family history. Apparently your granddad might have had a history of brain problems. Guess your dad left that detail out of your life."

"_They're going to pull the line Christina," _Cara had told me years and years ago. Back when it was another friend, a different goodbye, _"He's not there anymore. Not really. It's selfish of us to keep him here. He wouldn't like it."_

"_Maybe it's another simulation?" _I had argued, trying to find any excuse to keep him there. Keep him connected, Keep him grounded and alive with us. "_What if they gave him a syrum that could shut him down?" _

"_It was a wall. The wall brought him down." _Cara reasoned, "_It was a wall and an explosion. They've run tests. He's beyond their reach and Jeanine isn't even there to control things anymore. He's Divergent. An injection wouldn't have worked on him, not one like that."_

"They haven't told me your options yet," I sigh, trying to keep it together. Trying to keep it in the present. "I don't know if you're going to be like Uriah. The nurses keep coming in to check on you so you're not out of the woods yet—"

I turn around to make sure we're a lone. It's silly. I've been the only one there for a few hours. Thomas should be here soon. Than I can fall apart if I want. But I'm Dauntless tough. I'll probably be alright still. For both their sakes.

I glance again and then turn to him, my hand gingerly taking his own, "If you want to go, I won't blame you. Don't get me wrong, I'll hate you for the next few months, and when I don't get your cake for my birthday—of when I think of something stupid and need to call you—or when you come over for drinks with Tom and I—and the kids will miss you, you know how they hero worship you—"

The emotion is running thick like the syrup they used to pour on our ice cream in the early days of peace. "But if you want—if you _can_ go home to her. That's alright. I won't blame you," my thumb rubs a circle on his hand, tracing the numbers "If this is the time when your Raven's take flight, who am I to close the window?"

((*))

He doesn't last much longer after that. As I've said before, he's become a sentimental sap. I blame her for that.

He waits until Thomas get's there. My husband comes into the room and I can feel the chill from outside shaking from his coat as he embraces me. The Rain has become soft pellets. Neither Ice Nor Snow. As soon as he asks "How is he?" Four's machines begin to sing a symphony of disaster.

A small sworm of nurses come rushing in. A few doctors too. "His vitals are crashing," one of them say, "We need to stabilize him."

"Excuse me, you need to leave" one tries to usher me out. I knew this was coming. I told him to do it. Damn fool-He never listens when I ask him to come to dinner or throw out trinkets, but he listens to this? Everything thing else I've said to him the past ten hours he ignores, but the suggestion to return to her he listens to.

I'm fighting from the arms pulling me to the hallway. I might have said I would be alright with it. But I'm not right now.

"_No," _ I reach out for his hand, grasping it as though it holds everything I've been for thirty years. "_I stay with him. I—"_

"_We'll stick together, you and I." _I tell him that day when we walked home from Abenegation. From his old house on that day I nearly lost him. We held hands then. The first of our many family like moments. The memory vile was bouncing in my pocket. It felt like a gun, one that almost stole another link to my now dead friends. "When we have our bad days, we'll let each other know. You got that? No more of this running away and starting a new slate without the other. We're family now. A Family that _will _stick together"

"Don't you still have your mom and sister?" he asked, his steps still not the fast pace I remembered from when he'd stroll past Tris in training.

"Don't you still have Evelyn?' I asked, shooting him a look that wasn't to be argued with. "We have our blood family, but we've gone through the same hell the past couple months—They'll say they understand but really they won't. They'll never understand. There's only so many ways you can describe hell before they realize they don't know what you're talking about. And that they never will."

"So you're going to be my pesky sister than?" He asked, giving me a look of mild annoyance, "And you're going to be my angsty brother," I say, trying to match the emotion of his voice.

"Suppose it could be worse,'" He looks at the houses behind him, "It'd be worse to be alone."

"I miss her too," I said quietly, "I miss Tris."

He let go of my hand and instead wrapped one of his arms around my shoulder. I didn't know if he was trying to comfort or shift some of his own grief to me. _"I know,"_ he whispered, _" I think we always will."_

((*))

Zeke and Lynn come to the waiting room with the cake. As though they were hoping that could wake him up. Tom greets them. He tells them he's gone. I can't. Not yet. I can't admit that he's gone.

I told him to go. I know he wanted to. He's wanted to go since she left, the first time—when she ran away to the Eruidites to turn herself in. That's when he decided they were a packaged deal. He's done waiting, I tell myself, but that doesn't take the hurt away.

I notice the white flakes, the tiny crystals slowly melting on to Lynn's navy coat. _Angel Dandruff. _

Zeke's comforting Lynn, both jump when I fly to the window. The most movement they've seen of me since they got the news. _Since I got the news. _ I look outside and down at my town. My City. The place that has born and been the cause of all my grief and heartache. The city where things have fallen apart.

Outside little flakes fall on Chicago, blown in every direction in the winter wind. It won't be enough for it to stick. It's not that cold yet. But for now it falls and disappears in the coats and hair of those that walk below. There for a moment and then gone.

When I was a little girl in Candor, we looked forward to the first snow of the season. It was a magical day. One where our white jackets blended into the landscape and we would win in hide and seek. The Angel Dandruff, we thought, was just some silly story our mothers fought us to instill a desire for the white truth of fresh snow. But it was still magical. There was something about it. White. Perfection. It was the day when heaven began to cover the city and for a few months make it heavenly white.

It's been thirty years since I thought of things like that. Since I've let myself believe that there were things like magic and fairytales. Since I've put any faith in either of the ideas.

But I look at the sky, falling with the little white miracles and I know that somewhere there are two Ravens, finally taking flight.

* * *

AN: I thought I had posted this... whoops! Sorry about the delay.

I had entertained the idea of streching this story out... doing thirty years of anniversaries between part one and part two. It's still a possibility, but I have other projects I'm more invested in presently and also just got a promotion at work so It wouldn't be fair to led y'all down the road of hiatus hell. So here it ends.

Thanks for all the PM's, Reviews and Follows for 'Ravens'! Let me know what you think and thanks for reading!

-KH


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